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Galaxy structure considerations

Additionally, the dwarf galaxies that dominate the faint end of the Schechter-form LF have been found to have different internal structure and kinematics than their brighter counterparts (Ferguson & Binggeli 1994). Their surface brightness profile is found to drop off as an exponential less centrally concentrated than the tex2html_wrap_inline1106 dependence of ellipticals; thus, dwarf ellipticals (dE) effectively have larger core radii. In addition, the luminosity-velocity dispersion relation for dE is tex2html_wrap_inline1108 , rather than tex2html_wrap_inline1110 as seen for the ellipticals. Consequently, dE have smaller velocity dispersions than might be expected for their already low luminosities. As lensing probability for a given lens drops with rising core radius and is proportional to tex2html_wrap_inline1112 , the larger core radius and smaller velocity dispersion of dE makes their contribution to lensing statistics negligible. This effect can be accounted for by inserting a exponential cutoff into the effective LF of tex2html_wrap_inline1114 . Doing so reduces the probability of lensing, particularly that producing small-angle image separations.



Michael Dorris
Tue Jan 18 12:35:56 PST 2000